Why and How Influence Works (my SxSW Interactive PanelPicker)

What would happen if I told you I could get you hired some place where you'd love to work? Or if you learned that I could hook you up with the right business partner and you'd end up making tons of money?

How about a talk with a few connections and you'd sell books by the truckload? What if I could help you sell your company?

I have done all of those things and more, successfully. You wouldn't know from the number of comments to my posts, or retweets, would you?

A funny thing this about influence. Everyone's after it, either to have it or to leverage it. And very few take the time to understand how it works.

Not just mining the data. Because influence is a renewable resource. You can uncover and help amplify it by connecting people with shared interests.

Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers

What is influence? For a decade, Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point has served as a touchstone for those who believe that influence resides in the hands of a select few. Not so, says a new generation of marketers. They believe that thanks to the democratizing power of the Internet, anyone can be an Influential.

Both camps are wrong.

True influence flows from drawing together people with shared interests. This session focuses on the process of identifying areas of relevancy among your customers and prospects, building community, and allowing others to amplify your influence as you meet their needs.

Why is everything you know about influence wrong and what should you do about it?

What doesn't work? The 5 "influence traps" you must avoid

How do you reach the people who really matter the most?

What are the best ways to influence the influencers your customers watch for cues?

Can influence be bought or sold?

While the question of how you measure influence is interesting and valid. As an attendee, I'd wonder, how do I get there in the first place? How do I create/identify/harness/enroll
influence? What role does it play in my mix?

I'd want help in understanding how to
think about developing/attracting it for my brand/businesses. How you measure
it is in results... however, you won't know if those are good, unless
you know what you set out to do/change/activate/influence (pardon the
pun) and identify red herrings that can take you off course.

During a recent chat on Skype with my mother who's had the most influence over my thinking and doing, as we were talking about psychology and today's gold rush on personal influence, she
wrote: here's the difference, I never wanted power, I wanted to have
an audience. I wanted to be appreciated and loved and not forgotten...
therefore I was working in another way.

@Peter - would it be fair to say that it depends on what you believe? I agree, very few take the lifetime it takes to see and uncover what they are inside. And now we're getting all philosophical.

@Brian - And you have experienced this first hand: "Influence maximizes the return on requests to the community at large to lend a hand, it inspires us to grab a tool and help build a better world, to be part of something bigger than ourselves." As I wrote in my post for tomorrow, building community for the community is very different than building it for yourself. It looks different, too, even if you try to disguise it as "helpfulness". Now imagine that after all that, a company reaches out to you and wants to enroll you as "an influencer" to the car community. What would you do/think? Because to a company that sells what is essentially part of your shared passion, you are the target influencer. I'm glad the idea and questions touched a nerve for you, it sounds productive.